Engine Group announced today (19 December) that it's introducing a new transparent marketplace (TMP) model on EMX Exchange to offer media buyers upfront visibility into the cost of transactions.

Engine is calling its EMX TMP model a first-of-its-kind solution to the issue of transparency.

With this model, EMX will negotiate one transparent, upfront buy-side fee for each transaction, which aims to address the sum of unknown fees paid to downstream ad tech partners.

“In the average transaction, you have myriad players, hand-offs, marketplaces and fees — all of which are completely opaque — making the value to both the brand and the publisher difficult to understand,” says Michael Zacharski, chief executive officer of Engine Technology and EMX Digital. “Engine’s EMX Transparent Marketplace streamlines the programmatic marketplace to eliminate waste in the middle, while also making each step and the associated remuneration model fully transparent to agencies, brands, and publishers.”

Engine Global CEO Kasha Cacy said that understanding the pain points of the media buying process resulted in a solution that aims to help clients future-proof in an industry that's growing tired of the lack of transparency.

"Transparency has become such a pervasive problem because very few players can see across the entire issue. Putting pressure on the agency and their trading desk to be more forthcoming about fees, or urging the publisher to reveal their incentive and compensation models, has been ineffective," said Cacy.

EMX Digital launched in May of this year as a new programmatic marketplace formed after the merger bRealTime and Clearstream. More than 3,000 advertisers and 10,000 Ads.txt enabled publishers work with EMX.

Engine has restructured its business model in North America to unite its data, insights, media, and content business under one brand. It's undergoing a similar restructuring in the UK and Europe.